Joel Santo DomingoOrigin Chronos (X99)The Origin Chronos (X99) is a slightly larger take on the small-form-factor (SFF) gaming desktop. It's packed with the latest technology, and it has the power to drive 4K displays while playing today's game titles.

The Origin Chronos (X99) is a slightly larger take on the small-form-factor (SFF) gaming desktop. It's packed with the latest technology, and it has the power to drive 4K displays while playing today's game titles.

With components like an Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processor and an Nvidia Titan X graphics card, the latest Origin Chronos (starts at $1,633; $4,420 as tested) is a small-form-factor gaming desktop built to loom large on the game grid. It achieves rock-solid frame rates at full 1080p HD, and it's positioned to give you smooth game play at higher resolutions, including 4K. But even with stellar performance, it can't quite edge out our Editors' Choice, the Falcon Northwest Tiki, which is slightly more compact, with more storage, and a longer warranty.

Design and Features The Chronos sports a black, metal case that measures about 7.5 by 8.75 by 14 inches (HWD). Its compact enough to fit on most desks, but desktops like the Falcon Northwest Tiki, the Maingear Drift, and the Origin Chronos (Titan Z) all have much narrower bases that fit better in tight spaces. It's closer in size to the Maingear Epic Torq, though the latter is a bit taller and wider.

There's no additional expansion room inside the tower. The two DIMM slots are filled with 16GB of memory, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X GPU fills the single PCIe card slot. The only way to improve performance would be to remove and replace existing components.

The 1TB solid-state drive (SSD) acts as a boot drive, and there's also a 3TB, 7,200rpm hard drive for data storage. That's one of the largest-capacity SSDs we've seen on any system, and certainly contributes to the Chronos (X99)'s $4,420 price tag. The drives are thankfully empty, except for the Windows 8.1 operating system and Nvidia software to support the graphics card. The Chronos comes with a one-year warranty for parts, which is somewhat short for a system at this price level. Labor and 24/7 tech support last the life of the product, however.

Performance Gaming is the Chronos (X99)'s game, and in that regard, it is a formidable system. The Intel Core i7-5960X CPU is overclocked up to 4.3GHz from the 3GHz base rate, and there's the aforementioned Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X graphics card. These components helped the Chronos earn top scores on the 3DMark Cloud Gate (47,574 points) and 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (9,150) tests. That's significantly higher than the Origin Chronos (Titan Z) (32,312 points on Cloud Gate; 8,598 points on Fire Strike Extreme).

Performance on our two game tests was also excellent. The Chronos (X99) was able to display smooth frame rates at both the Heaven (116 frames per second or fps) and Valley (123fps) tests at 1,920-by-1,080 resolution with Ultra-detail settings turned on. That's not quite the top score, but it's close enough to the Origin Chronos (Titan Z) (132fps on Heaven; 133fps on Valley) that the difference is almost negligible. Other systems that have Nvidia Titan X graphics cards, like the Cyberpower Trinity Xtreme, the Falcon Northwest Tiki, and the Maingear Drift, are all competitive at the same quality settings. The Maingear Drift, which has an AMD Radeon R9 295X2 graphics card, also racked up similar scores on our 3D game tests, though the AMD R9 295X2 is a dual-GPU card. The Titan Z is also a multi-GPU card, but a single-GPU Titan X is equally competitive. The system can drive a 4K display smoothly, though you may want to adjust quality settings to trade detail for speedier frame rates.

The overclocked Intel Core i7 processor also helped the Chronos (X99) top its rivals on the Handbrake (32 seconds) and CineBench (1,663 points) tests. The Falcon Northwest Tiki was very close behind, at 33 seconds on Handbrake and 1,630 points on CineBench. Both systems have octo-core processors (with Hyper-Threading) to thank for dominating performance.

Conclusion The Origin Chronos (X99) is an excellent SFF gaming desktop that upholds the performance level of its predecessors. From its high performance scores, to its spacious 1TB SSD and its octo-core processor, it's a prime choice if you want gaming and multimedia performance in a compact system. The Falcon Northwest Tiki matches the X99 in performance, but it comes in a more compact case, has more storage, and a three-times longer warranty. It is a few hundred dollars more, even without its fancy paint job, but we think it's worth it.

Origin Chronos (X99)

Bottom Line: The Origin Chronos (X99) is a slightly larger take on the small-form-factor (SFF) gaming desktop. It's packed with the latest technology, and it has the power to drive 4K displays while playing today's game titles.

Read More

About the Author

Joel Santo Domingo is the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs. He joined PC Magazine in 2000, after 7 years of IT work for companies large and small. His background includes managing mobile, desktop and network infrastructure on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Joel is proof that you can escape the retail grind: he wore ... See Full Bio

Get Our Best Stories!

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.